The image
The image is of thought passing directly from one mind to another, with no word spoken or written. The picture does not show the people, only the exchange. Marc Edmund Jones recorded the image in 1925 from the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler's description, and the picture asks the reader to imagine an understanding so close and quiet that speech is no longer needed between two people.
Meaning
As a symbol, the image is about understanding that goes beyond speech. Two people who know each other well can share a thought with a glance; a team in harmony can act without instructions. Our keyword is Direct communion, and our keynote reads it in one line: understanding passes between minds without the medium of words. The tradition would read a placement here as a place where intuition, empathy or close rapport matters, and where what is unsaid carries as much as what is said. Read as a picture, it needs no belief in anything beyond ordinary attention and closeness.
Lynda Hill names the degree before its Karmic Condition and the degree after its Quest Degree. Before Gemini 14 comes Gemini 13, the master musician at the keyboard; after it comes Gemini 15, a pair of Dutch children in conversation. Read by her rule, music that speaks without words leads to thought that travels without them, and that wordless sharing comes back to earth in two children simply talking. Opposite lies Sagittarius 14, the Sphinx beside the Pyramids; as a reading aid it sets an old, silent riddle in stone beside a living, silent exchange.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Gemini 13°00′ up to, but not including, Gemini 14°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Gemini 13°49′ reads Gemini 14, and so does one at Gemini 13°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Gemini 15 after Gemini 13°59′, or back into Gemini 13 before Gemini 13°00′. That is why the chart shows the minute beside the degree. In EsoTerrier's Sabian chart the Sun, the Moon and the Ascendant are read first, then the Midheaven and the planets; each placement in Gemini 14 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Gemini 13, Gemini 15 and Sagittarius 14 beside it.
Correspondences
Each item with how it stands: “sourced” is in the work cited, “our construction” is EsoTerrier’s own, and “disputed” means the sources disagree.
- Where the image comes from
- Recorded by Marc Edmund Jones in Balboa Park, San Diego, in 1925, as the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler described the picture she saw for an unseen card; one of 360 done in a single day; published by Jones in 1953 sourced
- Degree before and after
- Gemini 13 and Gemini 15, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Sagittarius 14, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Gemini 13°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Gemini 14; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Gemini 13. A computed chart practically never lands on it disputed
How the schools read it
- Marc Edmund Jones (1953)
- Gives the degree a symbol line, a commentary, a one-word keyword and a positive and a negative reading. We quote none of it.
- Dane Rudhyar (1973)
- Rewords the image and adds a keynote and a commentary of his own, numbering the degrees as Jones did. In copyright to 2068; not used, and the place he gives the degree in his own structure is not shown.
- Lynda Hill (1995, 2004)
- Uses the symbols as an oracle, with her own commentary, and reads each degree beside the one before and the one after. Her rule and her two names are cited here; her text is not used.
- The Sabian Assembly
- Jones's own study group serves the 1953 image and keyword of a degree in its oracle, without commentary, on purpose.
- EsoTerrier
- Our keynote: Understanding passes between minds without the medium of words.
Claims about it
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The image line on this page, or on any site, is Elsie Wheeler's own wording.
falseWhat the record shows: Her words survive only as Jones's pencilled notes of 1925. Jones reworded them in 1931 and 1953, Rudhyar in 1936 and 1973, and Hill in her books.
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Reading the degree before and the degree after is part of how the zodiac is built, or of Jones's method.
falseWhat the record shows: It is Lynda Hill's practice, and the two names are hers. We show the two degrees with her name.
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Dane Rudhyar's 1973 lines are the Sabian symbols and free to print.
falseWhat the record shows: They are his rewording, with his own keynotes and commentary, renewed in 2002 and in US copyright to the end of 2068. None of them is used here.
Elsewhere on EsoTerrier
- Gemini 13: Mastery performed the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Gemini 15: Simple exchange the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Sagittarius 14: Monumental endurance the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Gemini in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
